Alright. Welcome to week two of the horse course. And in the first lecture we're going to start talking about basic equine physiology or horse physiology. And we're going to use the horse, but again, all this will apply to the other subspecies, donkeys, zebras, and what have you. So the basic anatomy of a horse is very similar to other livestock species but there are some key differences. And, it's really important to understand at least their external physiology and the terms associated with that because a lot of the terms. You know, not only are we going to be referring to them, you know, throughout this course which we've already done the previous week and, and going forward. But, you know, any time you're involved in the horse industry or you own donkeys, you know, you're going to need to know these terms because we, you know, we call specific parts of their bodies specific things. So that's kind of why we, we felt that it was important to kind of you know, address this in just one lecture. But obviously, you know, you could take an entire Coursera course talking about just physiology. So, you know, we're going to go cover. What we can this week, you know, and then going forward in the course. So, this is just the outlet, outlay, outlaying area of the horse and the external anatomy. And, and I know it kind of looks a lot at first, but once you start calling it and getting used to calling certain terms, you know, it, it, it becomes relatively easy and. You know, before we jump in kind of look at specific areas of the horse I, I did want to bring this up that, 70% of a horse's weight is in its front end and, you know, we're going to look at skeletal anatomy briefly and you'll see, you know, some of the, the reasons why. But, you know, not only do you have the large, you know, chest, shoulders but the neck and the head all forward of the horse. So that's where a lot of weight is. In these animals. Now, if we just focus in on, you know, the front portion of the horse, you know, you're going to, starting with the bottom of the chin, or what we call the throat latch working it's way over. And I did kind of want to highlight the crest here, and that's just, is the area running, you know, all along down the neck. And sometimes you'll hear people say a horse is cresty. Now sometimes that means, you know, they're arching their neck. You know, we see this with stallions quite a lot, you know, when they're around mares and kind of showing off. But also horses that are overweight, you know, we'll call them cresty in the neck. And that's just because that's an area where they deposit a lot of fat. And starting in week four when we get into nutrition. We'll, we'll talk more about body condition. So, one area to, to kind of put away so when we get to nutrition, you can kind of remember that. Now, working your way down the back of the horse, you can see the shoulders and then of course the withers, you know, we, we talk about the withers quite a lot. We've already talked about the withers, you know, especially when we talked about hands, you know, measuring the height of the horse from the withers to the ground and then working your way back, you know, the back and the loin. And then, you know, if you just imagine this is where a rider would almost sit, and they're kind of in between the back and the loin, you know, and then going down to the tail. Now looking underneath the horse, you know, what you will find is if you look at the canon area. Down, on all four legs the, those structures are all called the same, so, you know, you have the cannon going down to the fetlock, the pastern, and the hoof. So that's similar between all four front and back legs. But when you start dividing front versus back, you do start to see differences. So in the front you've got the knee, the forearm, the elbow. And then in the back, you've got the hock, the gaskin, and then going up to the stifle. Okay, so there are differences. So it's almost like our, our, our front arms are in the front half of the horse. And our legs are in the back half of the horse. And that will be important too when we look at some of the skeletal anatomy. You'll see some of the familiar terms. So jumping into that I do want to say, you know, don't worry about memorizing certain bones. It's not going to be on an exam or a quiz but I do want to address it just so you kind of see, you know, the horse and the skeletal structure and where, where it is. Again, 70% of the weight. So it's not hard to see from this slide. Looking at the large rib area, the neck, the, the cranium. You know, all that weight in the front half of the horse, you know? That's where you, you know? It's easier to see that. Now, if we start at the top. You know, just some basic terms of the cranium and the teeth and, and the neck. But what's interesting is the horse does have this kind of S orientation of the cervical vertebrae and what's really supporting the neck not only is the bone structure supporting the neck but you do have a ligaments or series of ligaments and then quite a bit of muscling in there. So that's really what's helping support the, the head carriage of the horse. So, so kind of every time, you know, you see a horse skeleton you see that it's kind of surprising. Now, if we just looked at the barrel of the horse of the, the main body of the horse I mean obviously they, they have a large shoulder, large scapula bone and then you could see the, the different vertebrae going from the thoracic down to the tail. Two areas I did want to highlight is again similar to external anatomy. That front portion is, is almost like our arm. So that's the humerus bone which is what called here on, on us and then they have the femur in the back leg. Which is similar to our large leg bone, our femur. Now looking at the lower anatomy, skeletal anatomy again very similar like the external anatomy from the cannon bone down all four legs are the same. So you're looking at, at similar terminology with the long pastern, the short pastern, and then the coffin bone. From that point upwards, there's differences between the front and hind legs. So, in the front, again, you have the knee, the carpus. But, ag, you know, again, in reference to arm, the radius and ulna which is actually our lower arm bones. So, that's where that is in the horse. And then in, in the hind end of the horse, obviously you have the hocks. But going up, you know, we have that femur. But then you have the tibia and fibia which again, similar to, to our lower leg. There's two bones there. So, so some things just to, to kind of remember with skeletal anatomy. Now, muscle anatomy. You're probably thanking me that we will not go over this quite a bit. It's pretty in depth, it actually gives you a really great appreciation for, you know, your veterinarians and other medical folks that need to know all of these muscles. But again, I just put this slide up to show you just how muscular these horses are, how many different muscles are working in con, in conjunction with each other to propel them, to allow them to run, as fast as they do, and, and keep them upright. So, so pretty interesting to see all that. Now, the digestive anatomy, we're going to cover in greater depth during week four. You know, what, what each organ does in the digestive tract. But again, just to kind of visualize, you know, the, the viscera of the horse and just how large these organs are if you've ever seen them, you know, in a colic surgery. I've been fortunate enough to, to see a couple of those, and it's just amazing to see how large these, these organs are. And then going into week six, we'll, we'll cover more into the reproductive anatomy. Really focusing mainly a lot on the mare, because that has a specific implications for mare management. Now, in our next lecture, we're going to jump into hoof anatomy and so, it's, it's just as important as some of this external anatomy that we talked about. So, I look forward to seeing you then.
